Nope, they hang on a nail beside the workbench. They haven't changed a bit. Not brittle, yellow or anything. I believe it's a silicone product so if you keep it out of the sun and wash them every so often...

Couldn't agree more. I use the 'tampons' for short term and the 'oysters' for long term. Funny thing is, even though your ears (the nose is sometimes included) are the one organ on your body that never stops growing, the oysters still fit after 25 years.

often countervailed by reductions elsewhere (talk to me about this when you hit 60)

funny thing is that when we need to get the "oysters" replaced (lost /broken) the audiologists only keep the molds on file for 5 years

Couldn't agree more. I use the 'tampons' for short term and the 'oysters' for long term. Funny thing is, even though your ears (the nose is sometimes included) are the one organ on your body that never stops growing, the oysters still fit after 25 years.

This was perfectly explained by Dave Allen in the late 70´s. When You get old You loose Your hair,but that doesn´t matter because there grows new in Your nose and in Your ears.

This hair in the ears is adjusting to the tampons You push in and thereby assures a perfect fit.

(I actually think he got something wrong, i´ve still got hair all over the head, top and bottom, front and back, but the thing with ears and nose is utterly true, i can soon have nostrilplaits)

You can see that bracing has a huge impact, also the use of sandwich panels.
Me, I use birch with lots of bracing.
The main reason is that I like the look of birch, a box in MDF without a paint job is awful.

Interesting measurements, but I wish there were more details about the "reinforcement". By reading the translation, I feel I may be missing something implied.

I use both the cheapie little 3M orange foam plugs, and a pair of custom molded noise blockers, and franky find the former have more isolation - but are certainly not as comfortable after 8-10 hours.

I spent 5000 hours in USAF C-130's. Always wore the "EARS" earplugs underneath a David Clark headset. At age 68, I can still hear to 14kHz. Now I wear foam plugs I get at the local pharmacy. Always check the dB rating of the plugs -- the most expensive are not always the best.